„Otsi sõnu laulu andmetest“
otsib sõnu või sõnakombinatsioone teksti juurde kuuluvatest andmetest:
Otsiindu ja toredaid avastusi soovides,
Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiiv
Küsimuste korral võite pöörduda Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiivi poole:
telefon: +3727377730 (Janika Oras, Mari Sarv, Liina Saarlo)
e-mail: janika.oras [ät] folklore.ee, mari.sarv [ät] , liina.saarlo [ät] folklore.ee
It is possible to search the database using a general or detailed search engine. A general search engine is available by default. If you want to set more specific and detailed search conditions, you should press the button “Detailed search” in the bottom right corner. This should be done before entering keywords or making choices in the dropdown menus, otherwise the data already entered will be lost.
Songs can be searched by one county as well as by several counties. To do this, you should click the county field and choose a suitable county from the dropdown menu; the selection is facilitated by inserting the first letter of the name of the county you are looking for. If the county has been selected, then the name will appear in the grey box and then you can choose another county if necessary. The choice can be removed by pressing the cross in the grey box before the name of the county. To remove several selected counties at the same time, press the cross in the right upper corner of this filter.
The search results can be limited by selecting a parish(es). When choosing the county, a list of the parishes of the county appears in the box on the right. If the county is not chosen, an alphabetical list of all parishes will appear. The filter of parishes works the same way as the county filter does. County and parish filters can be applied one by one, or by combining them – that means you can choose simultaneously locations at the county and parish levels.
The database has a system of historical counties (see map), which does not exactly coincide with the present. Setumaa and Valga town are independent units in the list of counties. Songs collected from places such as Narvatagune, Riga, Livonia, Crimea and other Russian regions are found in the search through “Foreign country” definition. If there is no exactly determined parish, but the origin of songs is a certain region (less than a county), songs can be searched by that region: for example, Hiiumaa is a part of historical Läänemaa, Sõrve is a region in the list of parishes of Saaremaa. The songs of the Avinurme region (parish was created in 1920) are under the county of Torma.
If you want to search for a specific village or farm, you should use the filter “Search for words in song's data” and write the name of rural municipality/village/farm in the search field. More accurate results are obtained from “Detailed search”: “Search only in... place data”.
There are two operators for searching for a collector: “is” and “is different than”. If you want to search for the songs collected by a certain collector, the name of the collector has to be selected from the dropdown menu (collectors’ names are listed in alphabetical order, generally according to their surname). The collector filter works the same way as the place filters: the collector can be selected from the list or by entering the first letters of the name. You can select several collectors as search terms. If one wishes to exclude songs of a certain collector, one must choose the search operator “is different than” and type the name in the right side field. Only one operator can be used at a time.
In the dropdown menus are available the years when the songs were written down. There are instances, when the metadata contains two separate yearly dates: they are the year of the songs being written down and the year it was sent to archive. In this case, the so-called standardised date is used for the search. If the period of time for the collection of the song text is specified, the period of the song shall be the year of the beginning of that period.
If you are looking for songs whose collection year is unknown, you must choose the minimum limit of the collection time “unknown”.
If the upper limit of the collection time has been chosen and there is no minimum limit, then instead of the “unknown” choice should be determined “from the beginning”.
If the archival reference or part of it is known, enter it into the field “Archival reference”. In order to obtain an exact match, the reference must be entered in the search field using quotation marks (e.g., “E 1980/2 (16)”).
(see figure).
“Search for words in verses” is used to search words or word combinations in the song text: verses – song verses;
Prosaic text – part of the song text in the prose form (e.g., custom descriptions, comments);
refrain – only in song’s refrain;
titles – the title of song given by the collector;
the original comments – the comments added the song text by the collector (e.g., word definitions).
“Search for words in songs’ data” is used to search for words or word combinations from the metadata:
the performer’s data – the performer’s names, age or year of birth;
the collectors’ data – the collectors names, including the normalised name used in the database;
the location data – locality, accuracy by village, farm, if known;
the type of song specified by the database editors;
editor’s comments – comments written by the editors of the corpus.
In the case of „Detailed search“, one can choose which part of the song text or data one wishes to. To do so, one needs to check the boxes in front of the available options on the list. If no checks are made, words or word combinations are searched from all song texts and from all the metadata; if the check-box has been filled, only this particular part of the song text and/or data is searched.
The search is text based and looks for the exact equivalent. For example, if you enter the word „jõul“ into the search field, you will find songs where the word “jõul” appears, but not „jõulud“ or „jõuludeks“ etc. To search for different grammatical forms of a word, one must use the asterisk [*] at the end of the word. For example, the search for „jõul*“ results in all the representations of the word “jõul” in various forms in song texts. The asterisk can only be used at the end of the word, e.g. „õunapuu*“, but not „*puu“ or „õu*puu“.
If several words are entered into the search field, the result will be all the texts where all these words occur, not only the songs where these words occur consecutively. If you want to find songs that contain the search phrase in the consecutive wording, the phrase must be entered inbetween quotation marks. For the phrase, the asterisk [*] can also be used at the end of a row of words, e.g. “läks* maa* sõite*”.
Example 1: By entering läks* maa* sõite* without quotation marks into the search field of “Search for words in verses”, the search result is 147 items. The verses of the songs found may not contain exact phrases, but, e.g. verses such as „Läks ta maada sõitemaie”; „Vend läks välja sõitemaie”; „Kas on sõda sõitemanna”.
However, if you enter the same phrase with the quotation marks, the result is 12 items. All of them contain a line that fully corresponds to the row entered into the search field (with consideration to different word-endings), e.g.: „Siis läks maale sõitemaie”; „Siis läks maada sõitemaie”; „Läksin maale sõitemaie”.
Example 2: Entering word “Tamme” into the search field of“Search for words in song's data” and limiting the search to “Search only in ... Place data”, both Tamme villages and Tamme farms will be brought forth. By entering “Tamme k”is possible to find songs collected from the village named Tamme.
Search, using AND, OR, NOT – is under construction!
Search is case-insensitive, using punctuation marks in the search fields does not affect the result.
In the case of song texts, words and phrases are searched from the edited versions.
In the case of the data, words and phrases are searched from both the original data and the standardised one.
The filters “Upper group”, “Subgroup”, “Type” work in the same way as “County”, “Parish” and “The name of the collector”. You can search for several song-groups or types in one query.
“Function” and “genre” allow to search for only one attribute which can be selected from the dropdown menus. “Function” is a search by song function, derived from the commentaries attached to the song texts. “Genre” is a search for the genre of the item in the database.
In addition to runo-songs (regilaul), other genres are represented in the database: 1) non-runic songs (e.g., newer or end-rhymed folk songs, transitional songs, flat foot waltz songs); 2) folklore text or data in prose may accompany the song (e.g., Martinmas Day songs with description of customs, fairy tales with songs, etc.; 3) information about the performers or collectors of the runo-songs (e.g., fieldwork notes, diaries, etc.).
By selecting the genre “regilaul” in the search box, the result will be all runo-songs in the database. By selecting “only regilaul”, only those items that are tagged only asregilaulwill come as a search result. (e.g., a song „Jõudke jõulud!“ (Arrive, Christmas!) can be accompanied by description of Christmas customs. Searching for “only regilaul” results in texts where there is no description of the customs; searching for “regilaul” results in texts with both custom description and without customs description.)
NB! There is no genre name attached to runo-songs in the search results tables and to the song text available in the pop-up window (unless in cases where another genre present in addition to the runo-song). Therefore, if the genre name is missing, the song is defined as a runo-song.
User can limit the number of search results by selecting “Only songs that contain” either all three filters – “prose text”, “titles”, “comments” – or one of them. If you choose several filters, you will find songs where there is at least one of the selected elements.
Both anonymous and logged-in user has “Show edited version” set as default search engine, which displays the edited versions of the texts of the songs (in the song pop-up window). To see the original version of the song texts, you can press the button “show the original version” under the search engine (or, for each song, at the top of the pop-up window).
The note “type names unchecked” in the search results and the metadata in the pop-up window indicates that the song’s type is determined only tentatively. The tag “type names checked” indicates that the type of the song has been attributed by the editors of the database.
Attention! The database is currently in the developmental phase. The song genre and typological information is constantly updated. It is always reasonable to conduct additional search for the words of the song type names in the fields for song text search.
We wish you happy discoveries,
Estonian Folklore Archives
If you have any questions, you can contact the Estonian Folklore Archives:
telefon: +3727377730 (Janika Oras, Mari Sarv, Liina Saarlo)
e-mail: janika.oras [ät] folklore.ee, mari.sarv [ät] folklore.ee, liina.saarlo [ät] folklore.ee